5 Thoughts: Houston Half Marathon Preview
The Houston Half Marathon is this weekend and with that, we could see the US half marathon record go down once again. We also see some of our favorite runners making their season debut, I thought I would take this time to give you some musings and things to think about as you follow the race this weekend… In no particular order.
Emily Sisson should go for the US record.
Sisson comes into the race with a 68:21 half-marathon PR but earlier this week both Ray Treacy and Molly Huddle implied that Sisson is fit enough to take down Huddle’s half-marathon record of 67:25. It looks like the weather may not lend itself to as fast of a time as we had last year but the field is just as stacked so we could potentially see another scenario where the top American finishes out of the top 5 while still running a respectable time. Overall, with Sisson set to debut in the marathon this spring — I think we can assume that she will be in a different state of fitness than what we’ve seen in the past.
Where is Sally Kipyego’s fitness?
There is no question that Kipyego — silver medalist, 2x WMMrunner up, who is making her Boston debut this spring — but where is her fitness right now? This will be the biggest question for me this weekend. She hasn’t raced in a relatively long time and had to drop out of her NYC build up last year. All signs from her training camp point to her being fit, but her time will give us all of the answers we need.
Can an American break the top 10?
The men’s race will be a tough race to crack, the top 6 runners have all broken 60. Meanwhile, the top American PR in the race is owned by Diego Estrada who hasn’t sniffed his previous form since 2015 running 60:51. Taking Diego out of the top 10 you move down the start list to Luke Puskedra, Aaron Braun and Shadrack Biwott in the 61:20–61:40 range. These races aren’t run on paper… but it really highlights how much work we have to do.’
What kind of coach is Ritz going to be?
We are about to find out what a Ritz coached athlete looks like as Parker Stinson will toe the line having run this last training block under Ritz’s tutelage.
Stinson is definitely a talent and should 100% be in that next wave of American marathoners, however, he seemed to be unhappy with his training situation under Brad Hudson last year and decided to move on from the situation. In an interview with Letsrun this week he hinted at it not ending amicably:
“It was just a small group and I thought it was great and I thought everything was going well,” Stinson says. “But at some point, Brad, he just wasn’t excited about our group anymore and he was really excited about Allie. And if that’s what he wants to do, if that’s what makes him excited, I can’t blame him. But basically when I moved out there, it was to create a group, it was to be part of a group. And then in the last six months, four months, that’s not where his focus was.”
Could we see a World Record Attempt?
Jemal Yimer comes into the race having run 58:33 in Valencia last fall, and appears to be ready for more. As a 22-year-old coming off of his fastest year to date — you would have to think he’s eying the 58:18 run in front of him by Abraham Kiptum last fall. For those of you who would like to know more about Yimer’s training — Ethiopian athletes don’t share much behind the scenes info but we do have this Twitter post from December that shows a pretty solid 12-mile workout.
At the very least I would expect the course record to be blown out of the water but the 15 seconds that separate him from the World record have to be weighing on him pretty heavily. The one issue with this prediction is the weather being a bad training partner for this one.
This is why we run the race!
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Happy Running,
Justin
